Opinion > Culture

The Catholic Church used to be Western Civ's pre-eminent patron of art and architecture. But the past few hundred years have seen the Vatican slowly transition from commissioner to collector, safeguarding the long and luminous tradition of Church art. Tantalizing signs of change are looming, however. Newsweek is reporting on the Vatican's… READ MORE >

News > Faith

"Benedict directly challenged an assumption so many Americans make about religion: that it is a matter of private devotion with few public implications. Not true, said the pope. 'Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted,' he told the country’s Catholic bishops Wednesday. 'Only when their faith permeates every aspect of their lives do Christians become truly open to the transforming power of the Gospel.' That is a demanding and unsettling standard for the right and the left alike... This is the thinking of a communitarian counseling against radical individualism... Perhaps it is the task of the leader of the Roman Catholic Church to bring discomfort to a people so thoroughly shaped by modernity, as we Americans are. If so, Benedict is succeeding." READ MORE >

Opinion > Issues

I could hardly process the thoughts and images that flooded my mind as I watched Bill Clinton angrily chastise a group of pro-life student protesters from Franciscan University in Ohio this past weekend. After all, this was the same Bill Clinton whose political aspirations were forged during the antiwar protest years of the sixties, the same… READ MORE >

Opinion > Spirituality

Pascal said “the sole cause of man’s unhappiness” is that he doesn’t know “how to stay quietly in his room.” That suggests something you can do for Lent—nothing. It’s not too late. If you’ve forgotten how, “All Nothing, All the Time,” a travel article in today’s New York Times, can help. “Aggressive… READ MORE >

Reviews > Books

In her first book, Parched, Heather King documents twenty years of worshipping alcohol to the point, as she says, she was “willing to sacrifice everything: career, family, money, health, reputation, my life, and what is far worse than any of those, my soul, for alcohol.” Her second book Redeemed – A Spiritual Misfit Stumbles toward God,… READ MORE >

Reviews > Movies

When Caden Cotard wakes up, the first thing he does is look in a mirror. He sees a pudgy, middle-aged, balding, sad-sack of a human being. The rest of the movie will be like that: a merciless self-examination. Neil Gaiman, sci-fi and fantasy author, described most current literary fiction as “miserable people having small epiphanies of misery.”… READ MORE >

Reviews > Movies

Twilight begs the question, why do girls always go for vampires? Is it the Byronic good looks? Or perhaps because they’re given to lines like, “You don’t know how long I’ve waited for you,” and “You’re my own personal brand of heroin.” Bella, a junior in high school recently relocated from Arizona… READ MORE >

Reviews > Music

There’s a pseudo-myth in rock music that drug-abusing artists lose their edge when they clean up their act. Their music, once forged in the crucible of angst and addiction, is softened and sanitized by sobriety. It’s a popular theory, especially among would-be rock stars without a label contract but with a dealer contact. To paraphrase… READ MORE >

Opinion > Books

Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, has recently written a book about Fyodor Dostoevsky, author of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. The book—Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction—has drawn some controversy, not so much for its content, but for the question of whether it should have been written in the first place.… READ MORE >

Opinion > Movies

In the New York Review of Books, Daniel Mendelsohn demonstrates a supple understanding of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited—its themes and ambitions. Many have criticized the latest film version of the classic Catholic novel for playing fast-and-loose with the source material, but Mendelsohn is one of the few critics to analyze with… READ MORE >